


like a drowned rat

by mnemememory



Series: breaking even [3]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Cat!!, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-25
Updated: 2018-05-25
Packaged: 2019-05-13 13:31:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14749790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mnemememory/pseuds/mnemememory
Summary: The creature, Caleb assures her, is called a “cat”.or; frumpkin looks too much like a rat for his own good.





	like a drowned rat

**like a drowned rat**

…

…

_There are a lot of big rats around this place_ , Yasha thinks as she moves through the Empire. _So many different sizes and shapes and colours. It’s a wonder they haven’t all been eaten, yet._

…

…

The creature, Caleb assures her, is called a “cat”.

Yasha stares down at the furry thing dubiously. She hasn’t made much of an attempt to get close to it, but it’s always around, watching. Sometimes it goes up to Caleb or Nott or someone else, making sounds and stretching out its claws, but it never comes up to Yasha.

“Cat” sounds vaguely like “rat” to Yasha, and it certainly looks rat-like. Fur, ears – four legs and a tail. Fluffier than how she usually likes to eat them, but tasty enough. The first time she’d seen it, she’d mistaken it as a source of food. It wasn’t until Caleb had curled up around the thing like it was the only thing that existed that she started to think, _maybe not_.

It dies, because it’s small enough to be a rat, and almost as easy to kill. She thinks, _oh no_ , looking to Caleb’s face – but he doesn’t mind. Mutters something about incense and money, and the next day it’s curled up around his neck like a fur coat. So. Maybe not a rat, after all.

The tavern where they’re staying is warm, and dry. Yasha appreciates that more than she thinks the others do. There’s a chill in her bones that won’t leave, no matter how close to the fire she gets, but it’s been there so long that it hardly bothers her anymore. She stays to the back, then, in the shadows. Yasha doesn’t feel like making the effort to socialise today, not on the back of three days travel with limited company, but she doesn’t mind observing.

Beau has her feet kicked back on the far table, chair tilted to a dangerous incline and beer sloshing heavily across her wrist. She’s laughing at something Jester says, who is seated with prim straightness on the edge of her seat, arms waving around manically. Yasha can hear, “ _and then_ his pants came off”, and grins into her flagon.

Fjord is near them, as he so often is. He’s slouched more comfortable – and less dangerously – than Beau, flagon still almost full. He doesn’t know whether to look amused or disparaging, so he’s pulled a face that has a little big of both. Every so often, he stalls them to say something along the lines of, “That’s illegal – no, no, we can’t do that, we’re here on _official business_ , we don’t want to draw attention to ourselves, that’s _illegal_ Jester –” but it doesn’t seem to get him too far. After a while, he just gives up and laughs at them.

Molly is next to her. Yasha appreciates his silent presence as much as she appreciates his loud one. There are two switches to Mollymauk, and she can never seem to figure either of them out, but she’s enjoying getting to try. At the moment, he’s relaxed and loose-limbed, watching with room with half-lidded eyes and a self-satisfied smirk. It’s almost as though he’d planned out the whole thing, which he certainly hadn’t, because _his_ idea of cheating their way into another cart had been roundly ignored in favour of outright stealing it. _They will remember our faces if we do it like that_ , Jester had scolded, which was a good indication of how slapdash the plan had actually been.

_Not_ my _face_ , Molly said, snapping his fingers and turning into a buck-tooth human of indeterminable gender and red hair, thus wasting a spell on something they ultimately agreed wouldn’t work. He’d been rather sulky about it the last day and a half, but looking at him now, he’s mellowed out.

“I’m almost out of ale,” he says, swilling the last dregs out of and peering down into his empty cup mournfully.

“Oh, no,” Yasha says. “That’s terrible.”

Molly squints at her drunkenly.

“Yasha!” Jester calls, breaking away from her conversation with Beau and Fjord. “Hey, Yasha, come over here and tell Beau that –”

She’s cut off as Beau pulls her into a headlock, eyes wide. “Ignore her!” she yells, flipping Jester over the table. Jester whoops, and something large and vaguely round materialises in her hand.

“Oh, no,” Yasha says again, this time a bit differently, as Jester cracks the table in half with her spiritual weapon.

“This is why we can’t have nice things,” Molly says, hauling himself to his feet. “I need another drink.”

“Get me one too,” Yasha says, because there’s a good chance that none of them are going to actually be sleeping here tonight, and she needs to fortify herself against the bracing cold outside.

Beau is flung back a few paces, but recovers with admirable efficiency. Yasha can’t help but give a small laugh as she ducks under Jester’s outstretched arm and delivers three solid punches in quick succession just above her ribs. A crowd it gathering, drunken louts and tired workers suddenly rejuvenated by the promise of blood. It would have been impressive, if it hadn’t meant they were going to eb kicked out.

Something walks over Yasha’s foot.

Yasha’s everything stalls, head jerking down as she peers underneath the table. After a few seconds of searching, the “cat” thing looks up at her, washing its paw with its tongue.

“Frumpkin”, Caleb had also called it. It seemed rather odd that he had given food a name, the first time Yasha had heard it, but now she’d gotten used to the odd emphasis placed on naming everything. It must be a cultural thing, if Nott’s insistence on naming the horses was any indication. Yasha had tried calling it “Frumpkin” in her head, but it’s an awkward fit at best. The creature seems to know it, too, because it avoids her whenever possible.

Except now, apparently.

“Oh, hello,” Yasha says, soft as anything. In the background, Jester slams her giant lollypop down onto Beau’s head. “What are you doing down there?”

The cat yawns, putting its full set of sharp teeth on display. Yasha hesitates, and then begins to reach down –

“WHAT ARE YOU PEOPLE DOING TO MY BAR?”

The cat disappears. Yasha glances around in time to see Caleb hustling Nott out of the door, creature set firmly on his shoulders. All the windows and doors of the room slam open, and rain starts to pour in from the outside, spattering across the window sills and along the tables. Fjord grabs onto Jester’s outstretched wrist and bolts, laughing helplessly. Beau, look around, sees that she’s been thoroughly abandoned and follows after them, yelling.

Looking into the angry eyes of the half-orc barkeep, Yasha realises that she should probably follow.

…

…

The next time Yasha almost touches the cat, it’s dark, and they’re camped out in the ruins of an old temple.

It makes Yasha uneasy, the crumbling walls and broken alter. She tries to keep it to herself, but from the way Jester keeps edging closer and Molly doesn’t leave her wide, she suspects she’s not very good at it.

The rain hasn’t stopped, not once. It howls out in the plains like a mad thing, wind blasting across the slimy rocks and cutting through the air. She huddles and tries to make herself small, but that’s never worked before, so she just mostly feels cold. Colder than usual, even, with a storm tattooed to her veins and salt pressed to her lips. She stares at the sky and thinks, _Where do you want me to go, this time?_

“I am going to try and get some sleep,” Jester says, hunching close to Beau. The cart is pulled up along where the entrance would once have been, so at least get shelter from all sides, but it’s a quick fix at best. “Who is going to take first watch?”

“I will,” Yasha hears herself saying. She doesn’t look away from the sky.,

Molly gives her a sharp look. “So will I.”

They settle down, as much as they can settle down amidst an open storm and no roof. As their breathing begins to even out, Yasha pulls herself higher, flexing her spine. She breathes in, and in, and in. Molly watches her and says nothing.

There’s a tug at her gut.

“I have to go,” Yasha says.

Molly’s smile is thin. “I know.”

They stay like that for a while, not moving, not talking. Yasha closes her eyes against the chill of the rain and can’t stop the rough grin that burns into the corners of her mouth.

The cat-creature is next to her. Yasha looks down at its wide, bright eyes. They refract the lightning, mirroring the vastness of the sky, and they’re both so wild. Yasha can’t imagine having ever wanting to eat it, not with it staring up at her with such feral, fey intelligence.

Slowly, so slowly, she starts to break open her joints. Fracturing them off of the stiff ice that’s built up around them, snapping her shoulders back higher. She breathes out, and out, and out.

“Be safe,” Molly says, leaning back languidly into the bare wall-face.

“I’d say the same for you,” Yasha says, cracking her jaw into a wide yawn. “But I don’t think you’ll listen to me.”

Molly pretends to look offended. It’s not a good look on him. “I always listen to you.”

Yasha doesn’t even dignify that lie with a response.

Lightning cracks, and thunder tumbles ominously amidst the bruised world. Yasha gets up, and things quieten for a few seconds, the wind dying down and the air going still as glass.

The cat makes a small sound. Yasha looks at it, and is startled at how close it is to her leg. It looks smaller in the rain, now that the lightning has cut out, less like a fey creature and more like a drowned rat. Yasha licks her lips subconsciously, and sends a brief, apologetic look to where Caleb is sleeping hunched by the far wall.

“I’ll be back,” she says, more to the cat than to Molly. Molly already knows that. No matter how far Yasha goes – and she’s gone so far, though maybe not in this direction – she always manages to find her way back.

The storm re-breaks itself onto the land, and the cat doesn’t reply.

…

…

“Yasha, will you hold this for me?”

Yasha freezes, eyes darting around without moving any part of her upper waist. The cat is on her shoulders. It’s small, and it’s warm, and its fur tickles her note and makes it itch, slightly, but not too much. It’s…nice.

_Are you real_? she wonders, trying to think of the right thing to say. Caleb is very smart, and Yasha finds herself tripping over words more often than not.

Caleb says, sounding unamused: “It’s a real cat”, and Yasha stares at him helplessly.

“I don’t want to make you upset,” she says, and it sounds like more of an admission than she would like. Or maybe less of one. Yasha can’t seem to make up her mind, how often she wants to confess to confusion. Sometimes it’s easy, like with Molly – who’s always confused about everything, anyway, and doesn’t mind finding answers for them both. But right now, Beau is watching her with bright eyes and sharp teeth, and Caleb is staring at her like he’s waiting to be offended, and the cat on her shoulders is very soft and very real-feeling. Yasha pats him on the head, just a little, and he rubs against her fingers

…

…

“Frumpkin,” Yasha tries slowly, when everyone but Molly is asleep.

They’re sharing watch again, this time tucked away in a small grove of trees just out of sight of the main road. There’s marsh around the edges, but the tree-roots seem to be holding everything together, for the most part. The fire’s burned down enough that Yasha can pick out the grey details in the far distance, eyes tracking automatically towards the road every few minutes. Molly is near her, but not next to her. He wants space tonight, too stuck in his own skin to endure the heavy weight of her presence. That’s fine. Sometimes, Yasha has trouble figuring out how to keep her own shoulders straight under it all.

The cat in front of her tilts his head, tail sweeping along the ground to curl around his paws. Yasha cautiously reaches down and scratches him along the cheek, keeping the touch light as possible. Her hands are large and calloused, and she’d hate to hurt him unintentionally. “Respectfully,” Caleb had counselled her, and Yasha tries very hard to be.

Frumpkin yawns, needle-like teeth flashing in the smouldering campfire. Yasha smiles – quick, relaxed. She checks along the perimeter again, and then scratches Frumpkin along his ears. He begins to purr, the vibrations running up Yasha’s fingers and into her veins.

“He seems rather taken with you,” Molly says from where he’s hunched next to a tree, running his fingers along the edge of his blade. Not enough to cut, of course, because Molly doe so hate to upset her – but soothingly, compulsively. Yasha can hear the phantom _shing_ from where she sits. “I’m surprised. You’ve never seemed interested in our feline companion before.”

“I thought he was a rat,” Yasha admits, cringing when Frumpkin gives her a reapproving stare. She’s still not too sure how much he can understand her and has been erring on the side of caution because of it. “At first,” she hastily adds. Frumpkin considers this, and then goes back to running his face along her hand. Yasha takes this as a good sign.

Molly smiles. “I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself. It’s rare to see you so unguarded.”

Yasha shrugs. “I think I like him.”

“I think he likes you, too.”

Frumpkin juts sits there and purrs.

…

…

**Author's Note:**

> so like 90% of this is non-canon because I started this two weeks ago and then episode 19 happened and I was like “wait I should finish this oh no”. episode 19 killed me, by the way. I’m dead.
> 
> (I’m not happy with the ending, but I’m coming up to my deadline, so).
> 
> This week’s theme? “rat”. I couldn’t resist :P
> 
> I'm "mnemememory" over at tumblr, if anyone wants to come say hi :) I'm awkward as heck, but I love critical role and cats, so that should count for something?


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